It divides immigration history into three periods: the old Immigration period (1903-1949), the intermediate Immigration period (1950-1964) and the contemporary Immigration period. But it focuses on trends of contemporary immigration. Based on Annual Reports and Yearbooks of Immigration, 1965-2009, it examines Korean immigration patterns in the contemporary period, using 14 table and 4 figures.

It shows changes over the years in immigration size, entry mechanisms of immigrants, occupational backgrounds and gender of immigrants, adoptees, non-immigrant international students and early-study students, and temporary-work employees in specialty occupations, The most important finding are employment-sponsored immigration as the dominant form of Korean immigration, a huge reduction of family -sponsored immigration, and extremely high occupational backgrounds of most recent Korean immigrants.